122337-mixed-factions-in-pve-servers
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- These are all games that have been out for a while. WildStar is new and not F2P or B2P. Big difference. And to be completely honest and blunt; I don't care what other games did or why they did them or if they went F2P/B2P. | |} ---- PvP is in such a state at the moment that groups pretty much need to coordinate cross-faction just to get matches. On the horizon they will be implementing same-faction instanced PvP. Teams of Exiles will fight teams of Exiles, and the same for Dominion. Potentially with guildmates being on opposite teams. And no, lore is hardly a barrier for people socializing cross-faction. There's even a weekly RP event to do just that (not that there hasn't been any drama of course). The NPC-only CoGS institution wouldn't exist if lore insisted that factions were that iron clad. | |} ---- ---- Rift have cross-faction PvE, PvP and Guilds. And in the lore the 2 factions are at war. I think that Gameplay > Lore | |} ---- The lore actually works for Rift. The factions are at war (sort of), but your character isn't really part of their faction, they only work for them. Kind of like a third party contractor. Not to mention the war between factions isn't really going on anymore as both sides have common enemies to deal with. And yes all PVE (and most instanced pvp) is cross faction in Rift and it works great for everything from guilds to queues. | |} ---- As players you and I can afford to not care what other games do. But as a business i would hope that Wildstar watches other companies...if not to do the same things which make them successful, to not do the same things which have been failures in those other games. And the fact that STO, SWTOR and WoW have been out a while doesnt change anything. Molten Core, BWL and all the vanilla raids were the same for both factions. Their first expac had them sharing the same capital city (Shattrath). Huttball was released early on in the games life, before any expac had been released. I cant say for sure since i didnt pvp a lot in SWTOR but maybe one of you other guys can tell me if it was a feature available on release and what what the team comps looked like (if it was only rep vs imp at release of if rep vs rep and imp vs imp was added later into huttball). I played early on in STO as well, but i wasnt there are release. But even early on in the games life they allowed klingons to team up with federation for dungeons. And that teaming up was being done when the storyline still had both factions at war with one another. But they always pull that "lets put aside our differences so we can fight the greater evil" cliche, which from a dev standpoint is good cause it allows them to create content that both factions can share. With their non trinity system and shared faction dungeon queues you could get groups in under 10 seconds. A shared faction dungeon queue system would help out with the lower pop faction, how much? i dunno but i dont see how it can do anything but help them out. Wildstar is getting close to being out for a year now. At around the same timeframe STO, SWTOR and WoW already had that stuff i mentioned either as part of the release package or it was added in after initial release. EDIT: though i will say this, in those other games it may have been easier to pull off those things because it was already like that from the beginning or they lucked out and the engine was easily modified to allow them to do it later on. It may be complicated or even impossible to do in other games due to engine differences. | |} ---- ---- This too. Want a legit lore reason? The Strain. I say this as a lore writer, The game working is far more important than your cohesive story, end of discussion. If they game doesn't work, the lore doesn't matter. | |} ---- This ^ And lets not forget that while rerolling to Exile is an option, so is straight up quitting the game (which for a struggling game we dont want people to do). | |} ---- RPer here. I'm all for cross-faction grouping and even guilds. :P Your concerns over exploits and friendly players in battlegrounds aren't actually problems. Take a look at Rift. | |} ---- EQ did it fabulously, you had the ability to build or destroy faction with all races, you could learn to speak the language of any race. Pretty sure if is was possible 16 years ago it's possible today, this is just lazy game design, and frankly I blame WoW for it. | |} ---- Any exploits that might be possible are still possible today, addons that allow cross faction chat, /aw and voice chat allow for communications between factions, this is a non issue and no reason to disallow cross faction grouping. | |} ---- Wow is definitely to blame, but the problem with player built factions comes to light when TERA did something like that and tons of people would flock to one faction or another because they didn't want to be at a disadvantage over another. So everyone ended up on the biggest faction so GG faction system breaks. | |} ---- ---- Untrue. A reprogression of the system starting at level 45ish(grimvault) can be reworked and the entire low level progression can be left completely intact since it's a zone to zone story progress. | |} ---- There doesn't need to be 1 faction, just remove the faction restrictions on things like guilds and LFG queues. Quite simple really. Want a lore reason? 2 different factions face a common enemy and decide to work together to defeat it (IE any dungeon). They don't have to like each other to do it. Quite simple. In the end it will mean faster queues, bigger guilds and a more healthy population as a whole. | |} ---- Not really... If they were to just combine both Dom and Exiles into one faction then that means all content from that point on could be based on. The whole leveling would not have to be redesigned, maybe just those quests where you specifically do quests against the other faction. Or they could take the same approach as every other game. Where the questing path is also in chronological order. Star Trek Online in Chapter 1 you are graduating from the academy and getting your first ship and getting into a few fights with Klingon NPCs because at that point in the story you are still at war. But towards the last few chapters Fed and Klingons have made peace. But they didnt go back and change the early chapters. Take a look at WoW too with the Horde, Thrall was warchief on release, then Garrosh became warchief a few expacs later, then Vol'jin in this latest expac. All those changes to who is warchief but the story doesnt change. There is a huge story arc in the TBC expac (their second expac) where Thrall rediscovers the Orcs in Outland but back in their capital city Garrosh/Vol'jin is the warchief. So that is just two examples...a lot of games treat the leveling process as a time based thing. Where a level 1 is leveling in the year 2409 but by the time they hit level 50 it is supposed to be the year 2415 or whatevers. WoW *tried* to go back and make all the low leveling zones fit the ongoing story during Cata. But as a result of that rework to all low level content the high level content development ended up suffering. Even some devs have been quoted in articles and interviews saying that same thing. Ohh yah and just like Hamsalad said there doesnt have to be one faction. Just change the status between Dom and Exile from "at war and we hate each others guts" to "uneasy peace and we work together but we still dont fully trust you". And using Star Trek Online as an example again even while Klingons and Fed were full on at war with each other they still cooperated with each other in dungeons under the "put aside our differences to fight the greater evil" reason. AND they are already doing that in Wildstar right now with Dom and Exiles fighting against the Strain instead of each other (in PVE). | |} ---- That's basically what both factions do from Whitevale on, having half of it's logical conclusion in the Strain areas. There, the Dominion and the Exiles have bases right next to each other. However, I will note that they still take cheapshots at each other. Like killing prisoners of the other faction taken by the Strain. But that seems like a cheap way of the writers to say: "Look! The faction divide means something!" Another alternative is to go the Rift route: the player characters (and some select NPCs) are smarter than their faction leaders and decide to join forces (unnofficially, I imagine, like some sort of secret society) to solve the Strain problem. Remember: the Strain is the Super Big Bad of this universe. At least right now. It makes sense for characters to decide that getting rid of it is more important than destroying the Exiles/Dominion. | |} ---- ---- IMO if they choose to make this happen they shouldnt get too carried away. K.I.S.S., and just make it so that Dom and Exiles can chat to each other in /say and /map (maybe), allow them to group up, do dungeons and do raids together. Grouping up outside of instances may not make sense. There are some quests that have you killing the same number of mobs, but quest names will be different so it might be a bit confusing. Allowing people to guild together? that may not even be needed if they allow people to group in dungeons and raids. But it would be nice to allow Dom and Exiles to guild together just to make coordination easier. Everything else ike making lore or quests make sense? i would consider that optional. I would be happy with just one quest chain for each faction right before Whitevale that somehow explains why Dom and Exile are now not at war anymore or how tensions have relaxed a bit. The story can be as strong or as weak as they want it to be. Have Mondo come out and yell "lets have peace FOR SCIENCE" or have a story where they discover one Eldan in stasis or Drusera threatens to blow up the whole planet if people dont start to behave. Like someone mentioned how they dont really care what other game companies do. But again, look at WoW and look at what happened when they tried to rework level 1-60 content during Cata. That is a game with a sub that i assume has the money, manpower and resources to pull off major tasks but they fell short (even they admitted it). That is why i say dont get too carried away with the lore explanation or the mechanical part of it. If they put more resources then they need to into this then other content development in WS might suffer. | |} ---- It wouldn't take any lore changes to put the players themselves on neutral footing either way and have them choose a side only if they want to. | |} ---- Yah but doing a change like this and allowing new players to come in and roll a Draken or Chua Exile might confuse them even further. Especially when all the commercials and ads and some of the starter quests are still themed Dominion vs Exile. Allowing them to group up later in the game would be better imo. With an explanation/questline anytime after Auroria/Galeras/Celestion/the-other-place, that explains why they are at peace now. That would allow them to not alter quests that are Dom vs Exile. But gives them a convenient way to explain it all away. Even with games that have done this people are still confused, but i think they wouldnt be as confused. If they do something similar to what you mentioned then they need to do some ads and maybe a few minor quests on the Ark ship or the 1-7 zones to explain why a Chua is in the Exile zone or an Aurin in Levian bay and so on. I dont think i've ever seen a game, at least not one i've played, that went from a 2 or 3 faction system at launch to one that joins or is able to group up. Star Trek Online maybe, but their grouping may have been that way from launch day. If it wasnt however and it was added a few weeks or months after launch then it would be the same thing i am requesting that WS does. Because in STO the formal peace treaty between the Fed and Klingons didnt get added into the Story until...i dont even know the Chapter name but it was a few years after the game launched i know that much. | |} ---- Actually, though, it's not that confusing. Final Fantasy XIV uses a similar "faction" system in that every city has a guard you can individually grind rep with. WoW has done this multiple times with other reputations, ones that slide diametrically. The lore of warfare is pretty well entrenched, and it almost seems easier to keep it in place and allow you to change sides, or even ignore them. That way, they can retain as much architecture as possible. Faction isn't taken into account on the other end of the queue server, we saw that in how long it took to implement same faction BGs. It's a root condition; I wouldn't be surprised if they use separate servers. Core changes like that take a LOT of time and effort to completely blend. Might as well not change the rest of the world while they're at it, because you're killing members of the other faction straight through the Defile. And certainly, what's good for the queues at level 45 should be just as good for the queues, if not better, at level 10. Just have people start naturally in one faction, and allow them the option to switch faction should they so desire. Or introduce a rolling slider, allowing them to raise reputations doing dailies for the Exiles or Dominion so they can grind up to switch sides naturally. Or let people balance them out. It would at least be more interesting if they kept the war backdrop and let the players pick how involved they are instead of involving them already. But that seems a more economical way to do it as far as time is concerned. Then they don't have to change anything besides how faction rep is gained and lost at the root level and how your own faction is determined. | |} ----